Pack Mentality pt 4.2
It's going to be hilarious/terrifying seeing how many parts I have to chunk this into for LJ to post it.
Bundled in a cloak by the brazier near the kitchens, Aramis sits with his boots up on a bench, back to a pillar, hat pulled low against the glare of blue sky on white snow so that he can drowse.
His sleep on a night fractures, he seems to take no true rest in it, and he dreams with a vividity that exhausts him. He dreams with incandescent realism of his little wolf, and his new child born already with an alarming full set of teeth, through which it can easily form the words to inform Aramis of his inadequacy, selfish and immature to even want children, they would be better with any parent but him -
Or he dreams that he's carrying Treville's child - Athos and Porthos don't mind, it all seems quite natural in the dream - and he can't believe his sense of fear and betrayal that even bearing their captain's child, his regiment still turns on him -
Or he dreams that he stands in the forest at Savoy, looking over the field of slaughter, holding his child to himself all but gagging on his horror because they mean to drag him out there to put him to death where he deserved it and so his children will never even be born -
Sleep can be the most wearying business, sometimes. Luckily he has plenty of time to nap throughout the day. Time is the one thing he has great drowning swathes of right now, his well overflows with time. His only duties are to mind his recruits, sparring at his side - to mother his recruits, he's aware of all the ironies of his situation - and to wait. To wait for his baby, and wait to see how people will respond to him after the baby. He's unused to waiting. Men don't wait. Men act. Waiting is women's work, though Aramis doesn't think it's biology that forces that matter, it was not her womb that meant Penelope spent all those years unravelling her work; men make women wait, and it is men making Aramis wait in the garrison now, men who have forced him into inaction.
He could work and be useful, and yet here he does nothing except be pregnant. They've achieved exactly what they wanted, Aramis restrained not by his body but by them, by their threatening him with a bullet if he tries to demand even one step more than they will allow. And does he accept it?
His loosely folded arms rest on the natural shelf his bump makes. It is not for his own sake that he is confined.
To threaten him is only something to shrug at, simply part of life, nothing to concern himself particularly over. He's no intention of being killed - oh, none, and whoever may intend to try the matter will face rather more than the shy and startled prey they may expect - but the lives of his children are very different matters. He has no intention of dying himself, after all, primarily for their sakes, and currently one resides within his own body, and so that body is worth more protection than he usually feels it to be.
He is not the man he once was. He knows his husbands note it with some relief, that Aramis' first response to a bomb nowadays would not to be to fling towards it; because he wants to go home at the end of the day to his little wolf, to his husbands, to his family and his home, something he's sought for his entire life and could choke on his gratitude to be granted it with them. But he knows, even if others might not guess, that at the same time he's perfectly the same man. He's still Aramis, if you please, even if he bows to another surname and it won't be 'd'Herblay' written on his tombstone (he won't mind; he's never been very attached to the name). He is who he's ever been. All his life has taught him is that the person he's always been is the person put here by God to love his son, his son, his son . . .
He keeps his eyes closed, his ears open, and feels inside an inner flutter, a stretching, he thinks - a foot flexing for comfort - and relaxes again. He notes the stillnesses more than the movements. Every moment without movement is a moment of horror to him, better to be pestered with movement at every moment than fear his child's inactivity. And his own lack of movement troubles him too, his arse is numb on the bench but he's too leaden to move, he knows he ought to move, it'll only complain more of the movement of blood when he eventually does shift his weight. Soon. He'll make himself move. Soon.
It's been a few weeks since Aramis roused himself early, so that when Athos went out to face Alexandre before the dawn had even hazed the sky's utter pitch, an unamused voice from above interrupted them. Athos looked up at the captain standing there and kept his face entirely relaxed, as unreadable as a river stone, and Alexandre flushed dark in his horror and embarrassment at being caught. Aramis, standing disapproving at the side beside Porthos, only folded his arms. He's not one for telling tales and Athos can take care of himself, but Aramis has some pity in him, and Alexandre could face nothing but humiliation at the hands of the finest swordsman in the regiment - or any regiment, Aramis believes - and had to be rescued from his own utter stupidity.
Besides, duelling is dubiously legal and entirely condemned by the Church, and highly unlikely to make Alexandre or anyone else warm to them anyway. The regiment is quite divided enough before it actually starts stabbing itself. Aramis has fought enough duels in his younger days - the sight of a furious man approaching his table at an inn was quickest dealt with by merely holding up a hand and asking when and where would be convenient, and if in doubt for the lady in question's name - but he's never been very inclined to demand one. He certainly doesn't demand one fought for his sake. Entirely the opposite, and Aramis' husband can be an idiot sometimes.
Not entirely so, of course. A great deal less so than Aramis himself. He shifts his weight, eyes wincing tighter closed at the discomfort of it; he has too much weight now to sit easily in one position for any length of time. Athos is no fool when it matters; the same day Treville took him and Alexandre into his office for a very cold talking-to, Athos also went - with no visible sign that anything out of the ordinary had occurred - to visit Alexandre's priest, along with Porthos, to find out what the man had been saying about Aramis and the little creature shifting grumpy for more space inside him.
They sat in on a service, and approached the priest afterwards. Aramis learned all of this second-hand, not allowed to risk himself on a stroll to a church and not inclined to do so either when it takes so very little to cause so very much harm. The priest realised who they were after the first introduction, and Athos says he paled, Porthos says he blushed; probably both, though in which order Aramis isn't sure. But he knew them, and knew why they had approached him, and drew himself up defensive and trembling and hot-cold-faced to face them.
He spoke in his sermons of sin as he saw it, he said. Sin consumes Paris, and he preached as he had to, for the good of his flock. He may have mentioned particular forms of sin. He may have particularly condemned particular actions of men. It was his duty, he said, to protect his congregation from the excesses and perversions that would lead them clean to Hell.
Athos informed him - stretched to the edge of his temper but Aramis doesn't doubt that Athos held himself coldly steady even then, Athos' self-control is almost inhuman - that his marriage to his husband was legal and sanctified by the Church, and the priest through his words was endangering Athos' husband and their child.
And the man said, head high and Porthos' hands had creaked the leather of his gloves fisting so tight at the memory, "It is no sin to destroy the devil's work, or the fruits of the work of the devil."
That is what he's been preaching, then. That a man out there lies on his back as a wanton woman and then expects all the rights owed to a respectable man; that he is corrupted and perverted and sinful, that he is an abomination in the eyes of God and man; and that there is not only no sin in the death of that man (that 'man', Aramis is familiar with the tone of voice that word gets said in when applied to him) but no sin in killing the contaminated child inside him either. It was sensible, in its way, not to bring Aramis to that confrontation. It certainly is a sin to kill a priest, however much the evil old slick of goat piss deserves it.
He settles his arms closer around his belly, without opening his eyes or raising his head. He has to be sensible. He knows he has to be sensible. But Athos and Porthos could intimidate the man into shaking but they could force no guarantee from the priest that he would stop swearing to a full church that there was no murder in killing Aramis and his child, and Aramis knows - he knows that he could kill that priest himself, because for the sake of his child's life he could do much more than merely kill a priest or two, and he makes no apology for that - and they wouldn't hang him for it. Not yet. They'd wait until after the birth, which Aramis is pragmatic about his odds of surviving anyway. So when he weighs the odds in his head, getting that man to stop encouraging others to kill his baby seems quite worth the price of his own eventual neck and place in Hell, because the child would be safer, and really that's all that matters.
He can't risk his visible bulk on the walk to Saint-Merri. And how would Jean-Armand ever understand his papa murdering a priest? He doesn't want his son to know he's been hanged and for that crime, he's a sensitive child, it would - no, he can't put his son through it. It would make no difference anyway. So one priest would stop preaching against him; Lord knows many others probably do the same, and too many people say the same things in the inns and stables where priests don't walk. It would make no difference. The priest is a symptom, not a cause, and Aramis can't kill a priest merely for his ignorance. If that crime were punishable by death, he doubts he would have lived for very long himself.
He knows that what they hate him for is not his body but his autonomy. Fine for him to bear his husband's children, if that is the sole purpose of his life. But to truly blur the line between man and woman, to carry children and yet still wear a sword and serve the King as a soldier, that is why Aramis' existence threatens other men. He still hopes they may forget, once the pregnancy is done. Once Aramis visibly looks like any other man they may mutter and grumble and move on, turn their bigotry elsewhere. They may forget. He has to hope for it; he has nothing else.
He doesn't usually trouble himself to think of his sex. As far as he's ever been concerned, after all, he's a man, and content in that. He likes women - very much indeed, they in many, many ways make for better company than men do - but he's simply aware that he's not one of them. He's a man; and yet a man in an inn, a Dane, a merchant, once came up to his elbow at the bar as he collected the wine for his friends and said - evidently he was not on his first drink of the evening - "A gentleman told me you're of the third sex." The man held his head bullishly close, overenthusiastic rather than threatening, and Aramis could really give no reply to that but a small bow. "But you're like a unicorn," the man said, and laughed out loud, and Aramis smiled back, and once might have sought out a joke about his horn but as a father felt less inclined to live as such a perpetually bad example.
And then the man's eye turned more assessing, looking him neatly down and up before he said, "How much?"
Aramis is neither shocked nor appalled that there are those who make these trades - he has made them himself, when he's needed the money - and he's not even offended to be propositioned as such, though the answer forevermore will be 'no' now that he's married twice over already. What he disliked about the man's question was that it came from no particular desire for Aramis, or even for sex; what he desired was an experience of uniqueness, the reduction of Aramis to the oddity of his gender, a story the man could ever after tell himself and his drinking companions. Aramis has made his trades, but it's been perfectly understood on both sides as to what the trade was, and the trade never was their perpetual bragging rights over fucking one of the third sex. Aramis has been many things in his life, but a particularly interesting notch on a bedpost he has no intention of being, and he picked up the tray from the bar, said, "Forgive me, monsieur, my husband is waiting for me." and left him. He hasn't really thought about him very much since, he certainly never told Athos and Porthos. The third sex. He understands there must be some name for the womb he carries, but all he's ever felt himself to be is a man with a womb; is that really any difference of significance between him and any other man?
Footsteps approach. Through the drowse of his meandering thoughts they approach like cannon fire, and it's a moment before he understands the wide-horrified eyes of Jean-Paul Bouchard, one of his recruits, hands held raised in a shock of surrender as Aramis' pistol aims clean and cocked between his eyebrows.
Aramis hefts his body up to a sit, lowering his pistol, and takes a sharp breath in. "Forgive me, Jean-Paul, you must despair of my manners. I was - dreaming, I think. My husband tells me I wake grumpy."
This is a lie; Athos wakes grumpy, in the most charmingly monosyllabic way. One of Aramis' greatest joys is teasing the first smile of the morning out of him, which sets the day up so sunnily.
"No - no, monsieur, it's fine, I'm sorry to wake you -"
"'Aramis' is fine," he says, and uncocks his pistol, fitting it into its holster, rubbing his forehead with a crooked knuckle. "And I insist you accept my apologies. It's an entirely shocking breach of etiquette, terribly ill-bred. I assure you I was raised better than this."
He smiles for him, and Jean-Paul does, eventually, smile back in a nervous way. "Sleeping on the job," Aramis says. "Please don't tell the captain. And as officially my duty is you, how may I be of assistance, now that I'm awake?"
Jean-Paul watches his face carefully, with a slight boy's blush to his cheeks. Aramis half-suspects Jean-Paul of being a little sweet on him, though he finds it easiest to understand other people's behaviour when he assumes that of more or less everyone. Jean-Paul shifts from one foot to the other, and says, "I only meant to ask, mon- Aramis. While your husband's on duty. What are we to do if - if -" His eyes flits desperate to Aramis' belly and then aghast back to his face like Aramis may burst forth a child at any given second. "- if it's time?"
Aramis looks down at himself, and puts a speculative hand on his stomach. "I don't think it's a problem yet," he says. "I've known myself bigger than this before my time. But you're kind to think of it."
"Should I run and fetch your husband if it happens?"
Aramis runs his thumb over the curve of himself, and pats the bump before his hand falls from it. "I would appreciate first if you would run for my midwife. I can give you her name and address. I really would appreciate that," He smiles, and means it. "I'll be grateful for someone who can keep their head and do what must be done when it's time, men tend to go to pieces when it comes to it."
Jean-Paul gives a bob that was probably intended to be a bow and then changed its mind too soon, and looks flushed and pleased. And there have been a lot of acidic looks recently, a lot of mutters half-out of hearing, a hell of a lot of bullets and blows aimed after him, and it catches Aramis too tight in the chest, looking at this young man so happy just to be of service while the rest of his cohort spar in a flourishing way behind him, very specifically hoping to impress him - it's just rather too much, and he smiles to disguise even from himself how his throat aches tight.
"I'll let you - I'll leave you to - thank you, monsieur."
"Aramis," Aramis says, but waves him off still smiling. "And thank you."
He settles himself back on the bench again, stretching his legs in front of himself, feeling the weight of them now they're on the ground. His ankles, mercifully hidden by his boots, have swollen in the most depressing way, he used to have such a shapely ankle, ladies used to comment on it. Now they hardly look like his feet. Sometimes on a night one of his husbands will think to rub them, which helps, and bizarrely seems to help with the ache in his back as well. Is the foot somehow connected to the spine through more than the skeleton alone? He wonders if some learned man may have written a treatise on it but it seems unlikely that a man would think to concern himself with the aches of pregnancy - so unimportant a topic to men generally - and just the thought of facing the Latin exhausts him anyway.
He looks over his recruits, calls, "Simon, your footwork." and folds his arms to watch some more. He wonders how long he does have left. Weeks, he would guess, rather than months, probably not long at all; the bump grows at a rapid rate, and even if he isn't yet he'll soon enough be at the full heft Jean-Armand expected him to carry before he deigned to be born.
Jean-Armand himself will be bigger now, the way the boy shoots up whenever Aramis turns his head. His little wolf will be much less little, when he's returned to his papa. He'll be leggy and in need of new shoes, again, he'll be getting tall and sturdy on good countryside milk and meat so far from Aramis.
The thought rises, twists, of how much better life could be for Jean-Armand, without Aramis. Aramis is disreputable, scandalous, dangerous, wrong. And that child deserves . . .
It doesn't matter. He doesn't care. He's too selfish to want anything but his son, he can't give him up, not even for his sake; he needs to see the boy, to know he's safe, to know every little thing he does, everything he learns and laughs for and to be there when he's tearful, he needs to be near him. He remembers the last letter from d'Artagnan and that slip of paper folded into it with huge ink-scratched letters sloping across it, Mon cher PahPah, he nearly wet the ink and smudged the words the tears came so suddenly quick to see the words his son had written for him from so, so far away.
He doesn't want Jean-Armand here, facing this danger with him. He's glad he won't be here for the birth, which will be so much harder to retain his dignity through without Constance here to help - he must not scream, he knows that, he mustn't scare his lovers and mustn't be heard by the rest of the regiment: he must be stoic, even if it tears him clean open, and he feels too weak with fear to know that he can. He's glad Jean-Armand won't have to be there, frightened, while his papa fights through whether his body can bear it again. He knows it may not. He knows his weakness. He's lost one child because his own womb failed him, and if he loses this one now, it's grown more than large enough to kill him in the act of losing it.
He closes his eyes, and rubs the back of his neck, head down. There's so much he's glad Jean-Armand doesn't have to see, and he only wishes that he could convince himself of that more when all he really feels is the grief of the absence of him like the howl never leaves his heart.
He will never know which unnamed sense makes him lift his head in that moment, and look to the open gates of the garrison. Something makes him look up, some soldier's second sight, but what it was only the Lord will ever know; what he sees, focusing on the street outside, is a passing cart, a stray cat strolling past, a few people on their errands ignoring entirely the garrison they must walk past every day, and a woman wearing a heavy scarlet hooded cloak, only just outside the garrison's gates, standing as still and relaxed as a blade not yet drawn.
Aramis looks at her dark red figure for a long time, and then sets his hands to the bench, heaves himself up, and shrugs his own cloak higher around his shoulders. He picks his way around the garrison yard carefully, stepping where the trodden-fast snow doesn't look too slippery. The woman waiting at the side of the gates merely watches him, wordless.
Approaching the gates he takes a keen interest in the view, assessing every walker and every window for its possibilities of danger. Under the hood he sees her mouth twitch amused but her amusement is low on his list of concerns right now, and he gives the rooftops a final suspicious glare over before he leans against the gatepost beside her, still carefully one step within the compound, and says, "My husband's temper is stretched rather thin under these circumstances, Milady, and here of all places is perhaps not the best site in Paris for you to stand."
She raises her head a little, smiling like a cat in her hood; crimson, he thinks, becomes her. She says, "But where else in Paris could I get an audience with my replacement, under those circumstances?"
He shifts his arms around his belly, heavy enough to bother him - why she couldn't have brought a chair if she wanted to have this absurd conversation he doesn't know - and says, "What on earth use could you have for a conversation with me? I can aid no-one in nothing right now, as I'm sure you're aware. I am currently a receptacle." He gestures at his own belly. "Perhaps we should make an appointment for when I am once more a fully autonomous human being."
She looks at him coolly smiling, and says, "Will you really pretend that you of all people don't act every time on your own resolve? Because I'd rather counted my husband's grey hairs as each marking one more of your strange fancies acted upon."
"Athos has no grey hairs." Aramis holds her gaze, then shrugs. "Athos has few grey hairs. For a man of his age he's a glorious specimen."
"A glorious specimen," she deadpans.
Aramis' own smile flickers, feeling something like true for the first time in a long time. "You and I are both aware of that, Milady."
She looks at him expressionless for a long second, and then the cat-like smile returns slow and wide, and she says, "I've always thought that handing him to you is an odd sort of punishment for the man, as my last act towards him. Despite what they say, I've always found opposites entirely repellent. And aren't you afraid of me anymore? The last time I looked in on you you looked sick to see me."
"The last time I was surprised upon with my child," Aramis says, "and unaware that you intended to use me as part of a complicated wager against Athos. I assume we have no quarrel now. I've no reason to take against you, and I'm not aware of anything you could hold against me in return."
"No," she allows, looking at him openly interested now, at the weight of him, thick and obvious. "That's not why I'm here."
"Well, then. How may I be of assistance, Milady? You'll forgive me if I don't bow. It's rather awkward, in this shape."
"You have no-one to blame but yourself for that shape." she says. "There are ways to keep the menses regular, any fool knows that."
Aramis only shrugs. He's known women who have had cause to require their bleeding to remain regular and have acted accordingly, and can't, in good conscience, condemn it, even if the Church may thunder. "I blame no-one but myself," he says. "You're right. I've always known what I'm doing, and I've always chosen to do it regardless."
She reads him with her cold green eyes - however much she smiles, he knows that she's a snake, not a drop of warm blood in her, and even if he knows she's not here for his life he makes no pretence that he trusts her. His last interaction with Athos' wife was not uncomplicated, and trust will simply never be on the table. He'll offer respect; he'll never offer vulnerability, though.
She says, "How far do you think you would get down the street before someone did you ill?"
It's not wounded pride, it's simple weariness at the fact of it. "How far is irrelevant. I can't risk the child."
"You don't think it's odd, though? Not just that they sneer and spit but that someone will put a bullet in a musketeer meeting your description if he strays too far into Paris?"
He lifts his head a little, and reads her face more keenly now, alert to the fact that she knows something; he puts a hand on his belly, where the baby gives a sullen sort of kicking to get more room, and says carefully, "We have put some thought into the matter."
"And where have your thoughts led?"
". . . nowhere fruitful. Milady, my apologies, but if we could hurry this game up a little -"
"You are aware, of course, of how the criminal class talks. We'll take payment to incite a riot and even to try to beat the child and the life out of a pregnant man, but whatever we'll take coin for we simply cannot be expected to keep our mouths shut on the matter. That would be far to expensive to buy."
Both arms folded around his stomach, around his child, while an awful cold quiver has got at his back, too powerful to fully subdue, "Milady -"
"I looked into who might pay to have you killed," she says. "Curiosity, you know. In a way we're family, after all."
"Who?" he says, very quietly, standing straighter, arms trying to tuck his own stomach safely closer to himself, as if anywhere in Paris could be safe for his child -
"My former employer," she says easily. "He has his priests talk against you until the city's so febrile that if you end up murdered, everyone assumes they know why, regardless of if someone in his pay actually got the final blow in. He's paid an assassin as well but that turned out to be a waste of money, I thought he was aware of how damnably difficult to kill you four are."
Aramis is aware, too shockingly head-ringingly aware, that he needs to sit down. But the snow's dirty all around them and there's nowhere to sit. He stumbles his shoulder to lean into the gatepost and grips his belly to himself, feeling the child - something about the little wolf inside him was always curious, exuberant, something of this one feels furious at its internment - kick and turn. Athos' wife takes a step backwards and gives him a nervously disgusted look, says, "You aren't about to start now, are you?"
"Why," Aramis whispers, and his head feels too heavy, too light, he doesn't know how he doesn't fall. "Why -"
"Well, he loathes you, for a start." she says. "But that's mostly garnish, it discredits and destroys your regiment, that's what he cares about. It's mostly not about you, try to keep your ego in check. He wants your regiment to pull itself to pieces and die, and he's doing a decent job of it so far. Your violently miscarrying now would be the spark to the tinder, it would destroy the three of you and none of you would ever be able to reconcile with how some men here would see it as perfectly fitting and right and deserved. That's what he's hoping for, so do try to keep it in at least until my skirts are out of splashing range."
The garrison spins, he hasn't felt dizzy like this in weeks, that Richelieu arranged for the hatred against him to swell like a corpse in midsummer, that he plotted to put this danger on them all, that he intends, he desires, for the death of Aramis' child -
His hands tighten on his forearms, folded close around his belly. He says, quietly, "Thank you, Milady." and gives a stiff half-bow, as much as he can comfortably manage, and backs away from the entrance to the garrison. She watches him with the quick dangerous eye of a bird of prey, and says, "I could hardly tell my husband, he's profoundly disinclined to listen to me. But someone ought to know, after all."
His voice is as clipped as the cold. "Yes. Thank you."
She gives him a long and unimpressed look, then says, "If you intend to do something foolish, make sure that you do it right." and turns away, done with their interview, because whatever happens next is little of her concern; she may be interested in the outcome, but not enough to step in and act on it. She has nothing to gain from it. Aramis himself turns and staggers, looks at the recruits hesitating in their sparring to stare back at him, and then focuses on the nearest bench and sets off at the quickest lurch he dares to reach it. Two of the recruits hurry over to help, and he'd pull his arms back in sheer distress manifesting as snappishness - he does not wish to be touched - but makes himself bite it down. These young men have no idea what's just transpired and they mean only well. He allows them to help him to the bench, where he can sit heavily, and Jacques can say nervously, "Should we - is it -"
"I would appreciate a cup of water," he says, and puts a smile on crisp as new snow, "but no, I assure you, it's not time yet. My apologies for worrying you."
Jacques scurries away for the water; Jean-Paul says, "Who was that lady?"
". . . an old friend of my husband." Once upon a time, that was closer to almost-true.
"Did she have a message you need me to take to him?"
The child inside squirms angrily for the room to stretch it can never find. Aramis breathes, and says, "It's alright. It wasn't urgent."
He sits and sips his water, and his gaze is on his recruits but his mind is miles away, in the rooms in the palace where the man who plotted to kill Aramis' child will be working unconcerned. Aramis understands his machinations on a practical level; the regiment is divided enough that if Aramis died, if the child were lost, there are men who would not only not mourn but would think that that was intended by God, and perfectly right. And if they expressed that even by a look in their eyes Athos and Porthos would lose all dignity and sense, would throw themselves on them like wolves, and others in the regiment would pick their sides, and the distrust and hatred and fury would make a united force of them to face a common enemy impossible. For want of a nail, because of the brutal death of the baby inside Aramis, their entire regiment would fold like wet paper, and Treville would be discredited, and Richelieu would ever after have the King's ear.
That is why he wants Aramis' baby dead. Influence. Petty politics. Nothing.
He checks the sky - the sun is low, not that it ever reaches high for long now it's winter - and spots the cart that delivers their wine waiting outside the kitchens, the horse placidly chewing, the last barrel unloading. And Richelieu wants his baby dead. Richelieu has done everything he can to endanger the child inside him. As if his child doesn't face enough threat just because it is his, Richelieu intends it dead before it is ever born, Richelieu will murder Aramis' baby, and if Aramis himself survives it, he'll leave Aramis in Hell to deal with the blood and body coming broken out of him.
And Aramis smiles, and dismisses his recruits for some rest, and says he'll take a lie down himself in the warm. It is warm, in their rooms, noticeably so after the chill of the yard but he only stays long enough to shrug on a heavy hooded cloak, to tuck it close around himself. He's less obvious as a pregnant man in the cloak and as it hides his pauldron, hides the shapes of his weapons, he might be no musketeer at all.
He waits with a thumb idly stroking the handle of his sword at the edge of the yard, in the long shadows cast by winter, for the man to climb back onto the front of his cart, and shuffle and settle himself on the cold hard seat, and then nudge the horse into clopping on again out for its stables out in Paris. Only then does Aramis tug the hood lower on his face, and check that no-one is watching - in this depth of cold they've all retreated indoors or their eyes are on the brazier they've gathered around, hands-first - so he can slip forwards, catch and roll his body onto the cart, tucking himself underneath the heavy cloth covering some empty barrels tied down
The wine is delivered from a warehouse some halfway to the palace. He can hitch another ride from there or he can walk the rest, if he has to. So long as he's quick and keeps out of sight as much as he can, he should survive as far as the Cardinal's chambers.
They'll never hang him in this state. They'll let him to the birth, first; safer for his baby to have the fucking snake's head off, whatever the price is, than risk the wait and what Richelieu could do to them during that wait. His odds were never good anyway. Better to lengthen the child's, and cut his own losses.
He checks his pistol in the dark under the cloth, fingertips alone knowing that the weapon is ready. He hums, over the rumble and bump of the wheels, as the child gives a confused elbowing shuffle inside him at this strange new movement. To the child, all of the world must be moving. The entire universe has just got up and started rolling.
He hums, and takes no joy in any of this, but he swears to the Virgin that he will do what he has to do for his children and if they can only live, Hell is a price worth paying, to him.
Continued
Bundled in a cloak by the brazier near the kitchens, Aramis sits with his boots up on a bench, back to a pillar, hat pulled low against the glare of blue sky on white snow so that he can drowse.
His sleep on a night fractures, he seems to take no true rest in it, and he dreams with a vividity that exhausts him. He dreams with incandescent realism of his little wolf, and his new child born already with an alarming full set of teeth, through which it can easily form the words to inform Aramis of his inadequacy, selfish and immature to even want children, they would be better with any parent but him -
Or he dreams that he's carrying Treville's child - Athos and Porthos don't mind, it all seems quite natural in the dream - and he can't believe his sense of fear and betrayal that even bearing their captain's child, his regiment still turns on him -
Or he dreams that he stands in the forest at Savoy, looking over the field of slaughter, holding his child to himself all but gagging on his horror because they mean to drag him out there to put him to death where he deserved it and so his children will never even be born -
Sleep can be the most wearying business, sometimes. Luckily he has plenty of time to nap throughout the day. Time is the one thing he has great drowning swathes of right now, his well overflows with time. His only duties are to mind his recruits, sparring at his side - to mother his recruits, he's aware of all the ironies of his situation - and to wait. To wait for his baby, and wait to see how people will respond to him after the baby. He's unused to waiting. Men don't wait. Men act. Waiting is women's work, though Aramis doesn't think it's biology that forces that matter, it was not her womb that meant Penelope spent all those years unravelling her work; men make women wait, and it is men making Aramis wait in the garrison now, men who have forced him into inaction.
He could work and be useful, and yet here he does nothing except be pregnant. They've achieved exactly what they wanted, Aramis restrained not by his body but by them, by their threatening him with a bullet if he tries to demand even one step more than they will allow. And does he accept it?
His loosely folded arms rest on the natural shelf his bump makes. It is not for his own sake that he is confined.
To threaten him is only something to shrug at, simply part of life, nothing to concern himself particularly over. He's no intention of being killed - oh, none, and whoever may intend to try the matter will face rather more than the shy and startled prey they may expect - but the lives of his children are very different matters. He has no intention of dying himself, after all, primarily for their sakes, and currently one resides within his own body, and so that body is worth more protection than he usually feels it to be.
He is not the man he once was. He knows his husbands note it with some relief, that Aramis' first response to a bomb nowadays would not to be to fling towards it; because he wants to go home at the end of the day to his little wolf, to his husbands, to his family and his home, something he's sought for his entire life and could choke on his gratitude to be granted it with them. But he knows, even if others might not guess, that at the same time he's perfectly the same man. He's still Aramis, if you please, even if he bows to another surname and it won't be 'd'Herblay' written on his tombstone (he won't mind; he's never been very attached to the name). He is who he's ever been. All his life has taught him is that the person he's always been is the person put here by God to love his son, his son, his son . . .
He keeps his eyes closed, his ears open, and feels inside an inner flutter, a stretching, he thinks - a foot flexing for comfort - and relaxes again. He notes the stillnesses more than the movements. Every moment without movement is a moment of horror to him, better to be pestered with movement at every moment than fear his child's inactivity. And his own lack of movement troubles him too, his arse is numb on the bench but he's too leaden to move, he knows he ought to move, it'll only complain more of the movement of blood when he eventually does shift his weight. Soon. He'll make himself move. Soon.
It's been a few weeks since Aramis roused himself early, so that when Athos went out to face Alexandre before the dawn had even hazed the sky's utter pitch, an unamused voice from above interrupted them. Athos looked up at the captain standing there and kept his face entirely relaxed, as unreadable as a river stone, and Alexandre flushed dark in his horror and embarrassment at being caught. Aramis, standing disapproving at the side beside Porthos, only folded his arms. He's not one for telling tales and Athos can take care of himself, but Aramis has some pity in him, and Alexandre could face nothing but humiliation at the hands of the finest swordsman in the regiment - or any regiment, Aramis believes - and had to be rescued from his own utter stupidity.
Besides, duelling is dubiously legal and entirely condemned by the Church, and highly unlikely to make Alexandre or anyone else warm to them anyway. The regiment is quite divided enough before it actually starts stabbing itself. Aramis has fought enough duels in his younger days - the sight of a furious man approaching his table at an inn was quickest dealt with by merely holding up a hand and asking when and where would be convenient, and if in doubt for the lady in question's name - but he's never been very inclined to demand one. He certainly doesn't demand one fought for his sake. Entirely the opposite, and Aramis' husband can be an idiot sometimes.
Not entirely so, of course. A great deal less so than Aramis himself. He shifts his weight, eyes wincing tighter closed at the discomfort of it; he has too much weight now to sit easily in one position for any length of time. Athos is no fool when it matters; the same day Treville took him and Alexandre into his office for a very cold talking-to, Athos also went - with no visible sign that anything out of the ordinary had occurred - to visit Alexandre's priest, along with Porthos, to find out what the man had been saying about Aramis and the little creature shifting grumpy for more space inside him.
They sat in on a service, and approached the priest afterwards. Aramis learned all of this second-hand, not allowed to risk himself on a stroll to a church and not inclined to do so either when it takes so very little to cause so very much harm. The priest realised who they were after the first introduction, and Athos says he paled, Porthos says he blushed; probably both, though in which order Aramis isn't sure. But he knew them, and knew why they had approached him, and drew himself up defensive and trembling and hot-cold-faced to face them.
He spoke in his sermons of sin as he saw it, he said. Sin consumes Paris, and he preached as he had to, for the good of his flock. He may have mentioned particular forms of sin. He may have particularly condemned particular actions of men. It was his duty, he said, to protect his congregation from the excesses and perversions that would lead them clean to Hell.
Athos informed him - stretched to the edge of his temper but Aramis doesn't doubt that Athos held himself coldly steady even then, Athos' self-control is almost inhuman - that his marriage to his husband was legal and sanctified by the Church, and the priest through his words was endangering Athos' husband and their child.
And the man said, head high and Porthos' hands had creaked the leather of his gloves fisting so tight at the memory, "It is no sin to destroy the devil's work, or the fruits of the work of the devil."
That is what he's been preaching, then. That a man out there lies on his back as a wanton woman and then expects all the rights owed to a respectable man; that he is corrupted and perverted and sinful, that he is an abomination in the eyes of God and man; and that there is not only no sin in the death of that man (that 'man', Aramis is familiar with the tone of voice that word gets said in when applied to him) but no sin in killing the contaminated child inside him either. It was sensible, in its way, not to bring Aramis to that confrontation. It certainly is a sin to kill a priest, however much the evil old slick of goat piss deserves it.
He settles his arms closer around his belly, without opening his eyes or raising his head. He has to be sensible. He knows he has to be sensible. But Athos and Porthos could intimidate the man into shaking but they could force no guarantee from the priest that he would stop swearing to a full church that there was no murder in killing Aramis and his child, and Aramis knows - he knows that he could kill that priest himself, because for the sake of his child's life he could do much more than merely kill a priest or two, and he makes no apology for that - and they wouldn't hang him for it. Not yet. They'd wait until after the birth, which Aramis is pragmatic about his odds of surviving anyway. So when he weighs the odds in his head, getting that man to stop encouraging others to kill his baby seems quite worth the price of his own eventual neck and place in Hell, because the child would be safer, and really that's all that matters.
He can't risk his visible bulk on the walk to Saint-Merri. And how would Jean-Armand ever understand his papa murdering a priest? He doesn't want his son to know he's been hanged and for that crime, he's a sensitive child, it would - no, he can't put his son through it. It would make no difference anyway. So one priest would stop preaching against him; Lord knows many others probably do the same, and too many people say the same things in the inns and stables where priests don't walk. It would make no difference. The priest is a symptom, not a cause, and Aramis can't kill a priest merely for his ignorance. If that crime were punishable by death, he doubts he would have lived for very long himself.
He knows that what they hate him for is not his body but his autonomy. Fine for him to bear his husband's children, if that is the sole purpose of his life. But to truly blur the line between man and woman, to carry children and yet still wear a sword and serve the King as a soldier, that is why Aramis' existence threatens other men. He still hopes they may forget, once the pregnancy is done. Once Aramis visibly looks like any other man they may mutter and grumble and move on, turn their bigotry elsewhere. They may forget. He has to hope for it; he has nothing else.
He doesn't usually trouble himself to think of his sex. As far as he's ever been concerned, after all, he's a man, and content in that. He likes women - very much indeed, they in many, many ways make for better company than men do - but he's simply aware that he's not one of them. He's a man; and yet a man in an inn, a Dane, a merchant, once came up to his elbow at the bar as he collected the wine for his friends and said - evidently he was not on his first drink of the evening - "A gentleman told me you're of the third sex." The man held his head bullishly close, overenthusiastic rather than threatening, and Aramis could really give no reply to that but a small bow. "But you're like a unicorn," the man said, and laughed out loud, and Aramis smiled back, and once might have sought out a joke about his horn but as a father felt less inclined to live as such a perpetually bad example.
And then the man's eye turned more assessing, looking him neatly down and up before he said, "How much?"
Aramis is neither shocked nor appalled that there are those who make these trades - he has made them himself, when he's needed the money - and he's not even offended to be propositioned as such, though the answer forevermore will be 'no' now that he's married twice over already. What he disliked about the man's question was that it came from no particular desire for Aramis, or even for sex; what he desired was an experience of uniqueness, the reduction of Aramis to the oddity of his gender, a story the man could ever after tell himself and his drinking companions. Aramis has made his trades, but it's been perfectly understood on both sides as to what the trade was, and the trade never was their perpetual bragging rights over fucking one of the third sex. Aramis has been many things in his life, but a particularly interesting notch on a bedpost he has no intention of being, and he picked up the tray from the bar, said, "Forgive me, monsieur, my husband is waiting for me." and left him. He hasn't really thought about him very much since, he certainly never told Athos and Porthos. The third sex. He understands there must be some name for the womb he carries, but all he's ever felt himself to be is a man with a womb; is that really any difference of significance between him and any other man?
Footsteps approach. Through the drowse of his meandering thoughts they approach like cannon fire, and it's a moment before he understands the wide-horrified eyes of Jean-Paul Bouchard, one of his recruits, hands held raised in a shock of surrender as Aramis' pistol aims clean and cocked between his eyebrows.
Aramis hefts his body up to a sit, lowering his pistol, and takes a sharp breath in. "Forgive me, Jean-Paul, you must despair of my manners. I was - dreaming, I think. My husband tells me I wake grumpy."
This is a lie; Athos wakes grumpy, in the most charmingly monosyllabic way. One of Aramis' greatest joys is teasing the first smile of the morning out of him, which sets the day up so sunnily.
"No - no, monsieur, it's fine, I'm sorry to wake you -"
"'Aramis' is fine," he says, and uncocks his pistol, fitting it into its holster, rubbing his forehead with a crooked knuckle. "And I insist you accept my apologies. It's an entirely shocking breach of etiquette, terribly ill-bred. I assure you I was raised better than this."
He smiles for him, and Jean-Paul does, eventually, smile back in a nervous way. "Sleeping on the job," Aramis says. "Please don't tell the captain. And as officially my duty is you, how may I be of assistance, now that I'm awake?"
Jean-Paul watches his face carefully, with a slight boy's blush to his cheeks. Aramis half-suspects Jean-Paul of being a little sweet on him, though he finds it easiest to understand other people's behaviour when he assumes that of more or less everyone. Jean-Paul shifts from one foot to the other, and says, "I only meant to ask, mon- Aramis. While your husband's on duty. What are we to do if - if -" His eyes flits desperate to Aramis' belly and then aghast back to his face like Aramis may burst forth a child at any given second. "- if it's time?"
Aramis looks down at himself, and puts a speculative hand on his stomach. "I don't think it's a problem yet," he says. "I've known myself bigger than this before my time. But you're kind to think of it."
"Should I run and fetch your husband if it happens?"
Aramis runs his thumb over the curve of himself, and pats the bump before his hand falls from it. "I would appreciate first if you would run for my midwife. I can give you her name and address. I really would appreciate that," He smiles, and means it. "I'll be grateful for someone who can keep their head and do what must be done when it's time, men tend to go to pieces when it comes to it."
Jean-Paul gives a bob that was probably intended to be a bow and then changed its mind too soon, and looks flushed and pleased. And there have been a lot of acidic looks recently, a lot of mutters half-out of hearing, a hell of a lot of bullets and blows aimed after him, and it catches Aramis too tight in the chest, looking at this young man so happy just to be of service while the rest of his cohort spar in a flourishing way behind him, very specifically hoping to impress him - it's just rather too much, and he smiles to disguise even from himself how his throat aches tight.
"I'll let you - I'll leave you to - thank you, monsieur."
"Aramis," Aramis says, but waves him off still smiling. "And thank you."
He settles himself back on the bench again, stretching his legs in front of himself, feeling the weight of them now they're on the ground. His ankles, mercifully hidden by his boots, have swollen in the most depressing way, he used to have such a shapely ankle, ladies used to comment on it. Now they hardly look like his feet. Sometimes on a night one of his husbands will think to rub them, which helps, and bizarrely seems to help with the ache in his back as well. Is the foot somehow connected to the spine through more than the skeleton alone? He wonders if some learned man may have written a treatise on it but it seems unlikely that a man would think to concern himself with the aches of pregnancy - so unimportant a topic to men generally - and just the thought of facing the Latin exhausts him anyway.
He looks over his recruits, calls, "Simon, your footwork." and folds his arms to watch some more. He wonders how long he does have left. Weeks, he would guess, rather than months, probably not long at all; the bump grows at a rapid rate, and even if he isn't yet he'll soon enough be at the full heft Jean-Armand expected him to carry before he deigned to be born.
Jean-Armand himself will be bigger now, the way the boy shoots up whenever Aramis turns his head. His little wolf will be much less little, when he's returned to his papa. He'll be leggy and in need of new shoes, again, he'll be getting tall and sturdy on good countryside milk and meat so far from Aramis.
The thought rises, twists, of how much better life could be for Jean-Armand, without Aramis. Aramis is disreputable, scandalous, dangerous, wrong. And that child deserves . . .
It doesn't matter. He doesn't care. He's too selfish to want anything but his son, he can't give him up, not even for his sake; he needs to see the boy, to know he's safe, to know every little thing he does, everything he learns and laughs for and to be there when he's tearful, he needs to be near him. He remembers the last letter from d'Artagnan and that slip of paper folded into it with huge ink-scratched letters sloping across it, Mon cher PahPah, he nearly wet the ink and smudged the words the tears came so suddenly quick to see the words his son had written for him from so, so far away.
He doesn't want Jean-Armand here, facing this danger with him. He's glad he won't be here for the birth, which will be so much harder to retain his dignity through without Constance here to help - he must not scream, he knows that, he mustn't scare his lovers and mustn't be heard by the rest of the regiment: he must be stoic, even if it tears him clean open, and he feels too weak with fear to know that he can. He's glad Jean-Armand won't have to be there, frightened, while his papa fights through whether his body can bear it again. He knows it may not. He knows his weakness. He's lost one child because his own womb failed him, and if he loses this one now, it's grown more than large enough to kill him in the act of losing it.
He closes his eyes, and rubs the back of his neck, head down. There's so much he's glad Jean-Armand doesn't have to see, and he only wishes that he could convince himself of that more when all he really feels is the grief of the absence of him like the howl never leaves his heart.
He will never know which unnamed sense makes him lift his head in that moment, and look to the open gates of the garrison. Something makes him look up, some soldier's second sight, but what it was only the Lord will ever know; what he sees, focusing on the street outside, is a passing cart, a stray cat strolling past, a few people on their errands ignoring entirely the garrison they must walk past every day, and a woman wearing a heavy scarlet hooded cloak, only just outside the garrison's gates, standing as still and relaxed as a blade not yet drawn.
Aramis looks at her dark red figure for a long time, and then sets his hands to the bench, heaves himself up, and shrugs his own cloak higher around his shoulders. He picks his way around the garrison yard carefully, stepping where the trodden-fast snow doesn't look too slippery. The woman waiting at the side of the gates merely watches him, wordless.
Approaching the gates he takes a keen interest in the view, assessing every walker and every window for its possibilities of danger. Under the hood he sees her mouth twitch amused but her amusement is low on his list of concerns right now, and he gives the rooftops a final suspicious glare over before he leans against the gatepost beside her, still carefully one step within the compound, and says, "My husband's temper is stretched rather thin under these circumstances, Milady, and here of all places is perhaps not the best site in Paris for you to stand."
She raises her head a little, smiling like a cat in her hood; crimson, he thinks, becomes her. She says, "But where else in Paris could I get an audience with my replacement, under those circumstances?"
He shifts his arms around his belly, heavy enough to bother him - why she couldn't have brought a chair if she wanted to have this absurd conversation he doesn't know - and says, "What on earth use could you have for a conversation with me? I can aid no-one in nothing right now, as I'm sure you're aware. I am currently a receptacle." He gestures at his own belly. "Perhaps we should make an appointment for when I am once more a fully autonomous human being."
She looks at him coolly smiling, and says, "Will you really pretend that you of all people don't act every time on your own resolve? Because I'd rather counted my husband's grey hairs as each marking one more of your strange fancies acted upon."
"Athos has no grey hairs." Aramis holds her gaze, then shrugs. "Athos has few grey hairs. For a man of his age he's a glorious specimen."
"A glorious specimen," she deadpans.
Aramis' own smile flickers, feeling something like true for the first time in a long time. "You and I are both aware of that, Milady."
She looks at him expressionless for a long second, and then the cat-like smile returns slow and wide, and she says, "I've always thought that handing him to you is an odd sort of punishment for the man, as my last act towards him. Despite what they say, I've always found opposites entirely repellent. And aren't you afraid of me anymore? The last time I looked in on you you looked sick to see me."
"The last time I was surprised upon with my child," Aramis says, "and unaware that you intended to use me as part of a complicated wager against Athos. I assume we have no quarrel now. I've no reason to take against you, and I'm not aware of anything you could hold against me in return."
"No," she allows, looking at him openly interested now, at the weight of him, thick and obvious. "That's not why I'm here."
"Well, then. How may I be of assistance, Milady? You'll forgive me if I don't bow. It's rather awkward, in this shape."
"You have no-one to blame but yourself for that shape." she says. "There are ways to keep the menses regular, any fool knows that."
Aramis only shrugs. He's known women who have had cause to require their bleeding to remain regular and have acted accordingly, and can't, in good conscience, condemn it, even if the Church may thunder. "I blame no-one but myself," he says. "You're right. I've always known what I'm doing, and I've always chosen to do it regardless."
She reads him with her cold green eyes - however much she smiles, he knows that she's a snake, not a drop of warm blood in her, and even if he knows she's not here for his life he makes no pretence that he trusts her. His last interaction with Athos' wife was not uncomplicated, and trust will simply never be on the table. He'll offer respect; he'll never offer vulnerability, though.
She says, "How far do you think you would get down the street before someone did you ill?"
It's not wounded pride, it's simple weariness at the fact of it. "How far is irrelevant. I can't risk the child."
"You don't think it's odd, though? Not just that they sneer and spit but that someone will put a bullet in a musketeer meeting your description if he strays too far into Paris?"
He lifts his head a little, and reads her face more keenly now, alert to the fact that she knows something; he puts a hand on his belly, where the baby gives a sullen sort of kicking to get more room, and says carefully, "We have put some thought into the matter."
"And where have your thoughts led?"
". . . nowhere fruitful. Milady, my apologies, but if we could hurry this game up a little -"
"You are aware, of course, of how the criminal class talks. We'll take payment to incite a riot and even to try to beat the child and the life out of a pregnant man, but whatever we'll take coin for we simply cannot be expected to keep our mouths shut on the matter. That would be far to expensive to buy."
Both arms folded around his stomach, around his child, while an awful cold quiver has got at his back, too powerful to fully subdue, "Milady -"
"I looked into who might pay to have you killed," she says. "Curiosity, you know. In a way we're family, after all."
"Who?" he says, very quietly, standing straighter, arms trying to tuck his own stomach safely closer to himself, as if anywhere in Paris could be safe for his child -
"My former employer," she says easily. "He has his priests talk against you until the city's so febrile that if you end up murdered, everyone assumes they know why, regardless of if someone in his pay actually got the final blow in. He's paid an assassin as well but that turned out to be a waste of money, I thought he was aware of how damnably difficult to kill you four are."
Aramis is aware, too shockingly head-ringingly aware, that he needs to sit down. But the snow's dirty all around them and there's nowhere to sit. He stumbles his shoulder to lean into the gatepost and grips his belly to himself, feeling the child - something about the little wolf inside him was always curious, exuberant, something of this one feels furious at its internment - kick and turn. Athos' wife takes a step backwards and gives him a nervously disgusted look, says, "You aren't about to start now, are you?"
"Why," Aramis whispers, and his head feels too heavy, too light, he doesn't know how he doesn't fall. "Why -"
"Well, he loathes you, for a start." she says. "But that's mostly garnish, it discredits and destroys your regiment, that's what he cares about. It's mostly not about you, try to keep your ego in check. He wants your regiment to pull itself to pieces and die, and he's doing a decent job of it so far. Your violently miscarrying now would be the spark to the tinder, it would destroy the three of you and none of you would ever be able to reconcile with how some men here would see it as perfectly fitting and right and deserved. That's what he's hoping for, so do try to keep it in at least until my skirts are out of splashing range."
The garrison spins, he hasn't felt dizzy like this in weeks, that Richelieu arranged for the hatred against him to swell like a corpse in midsummer, that he plotted to put this danger on them all, that he intends, he desires, for the death of Aramis' child -
His hands tighten on his forearms, folded close around his belly. He says, quietly, "Thank you, Milady." and gives a stiff half-bow, as much as he can comfortably manage, and backs away from the entrance to the garrison. She watches him with the quick dangerous eye of a bird of prey, and says, "I could hardly tell my husband, he's profoundly disinclined to listen to me. But someone ought to know, after all."
His voice is as clipped as the cold. "Yes. Thank you."
She gives him a long and unimpressed look, then says, "If you intend to do something foolish, make sure that you do it right." and turns away, done with their interview, because whatever happens next is little of her concern; she may be interested in the outcome, but not enough to step in and act on it. She has nothing to gain from it. Aramis himself turns and staggers, looks at the recruits hesitating in their sparring to stare back at him, and then focuses on the nearest bench and sets off at the quickest lurch he dares to reach it. Two of the recruits hurry over to help, and he'd pull his arms back in sheer distress manifesting as snappishness - he does not wish to be touched - but makes himself bite it down. These young men have no idea what's just transpired and they mean only well. He allows them to help him to the bench, where he can sit heavily, and Jacques can say nervously, "Should we - is it -"
"I would appreciate a cup of water," he says, and puts a smile on crisp as new snow, "but no, I assure you, it's not time yet. My apologies for worrying you."
Jacques scurries away for the water; Jean-Paul says, "Who was that lady?"
". . . an old friend of my husband." Once upon a time, that was closer to almost-true.
"Did she have a message you need me to take to him?"
The child inside squirms angrily for the room to stretch it can never find. Aramis breathes, and says, "It's alright. It wasn't urgent."
He sits and sips his water, and his gaze is on his recruits but his mind is miles away, in the rooms in the palace where the man who plotted to kill Aramis' child will be working unconcerned. Aramis understands his machinations on a practical level; the regiment is divided enough that if Aramis died, if the child were lost, there are men who would not only not mourn but would think that that was intended by God, and perfectly right. And if they expressed that even by a look in their eyes Athos and Porthos would lose all dignity and sense, would throw themselves on them like wolves, and others in the regiment would pick their sides, and the distrust and hatred and fury would make a united force of them to face a common enemy impossible. For want of a nail, because of the brutal death of the baby inside Aramis, their entire regiment would fold like wet paper, and Treville would be discredited, and Richelieu would ever after have the King's ear.
That is why he wants Aramis' baby dead. Influence. Petty politics. Nothing.
He checks the sky - the sun is low, not that it ever reaches high for long now it's winter - and spots the cart that delivers their wine waiting outside the kitchens, the horse placidly chewing, the last barrel unloading. And Richelieu wants his baby dead. Richelieu has done everything he can to endanger the child inside him. As if his child doesn't face enough threat just because it is his, Richelieu intends it dead before it is ever born, Richelieu will murder Aramis' baby, and if Aramis himself survives it, he'll leave Aramis in Hell to deal with the blood and body coming broken out of him.
And Aramis smiles, and dismisses his recruits for some rest, and says he'll take a lie down himself in the warm. It is warm, in their rooms, noticeably so after the chill of the yard but he only stays long enough to shrug on a heavy hooded cloak, to tuck it close around himself. He's less obvious as a pregnant man in the cloak and as it hides his pauldron, hides the shapes of his weapons, he might be no musketeer at all.
He waits with a thumb idly stroking the handle of his sword at the edge of the yard, in the long shadows cast by winter, for the man to climb back onto the front of his cart, and shuffle and settle himself on the cold hard seat, and then nudge the horse into clopping on again out for its stables out in Paris. Only then does Aramis tug the hood lower on his face, and check that no-one is watching - in this depth of cold they've all retreated indoors or their eyes are on the brazier they've gathered around, hands-first - so he can slip forwards, catch and roll his body onto the cart, tucking himself underneath the heavy cloth covering some empty barrels tied down
The wine is delivered from a warehouse some halfway to the palace. He can hitch another ride from there or he can walk the rest, if he has to. So long as he's quick and keeps out of sight as much as he can, he should survive as far as the Cardinal's chambers.
They'll never hang him in this state. They'll let him to the birth, first; safer for his baby to have the fucking snake's head off, whatever the price is, than risk the wait and what Richelieu could do to them during that wait. His odds were never good anyway. Better to lengthen the child's, and cut his own losses.
He checks his pistol in the dark under the cloth, fingertips alone knowing that the weapon is ready. He hums, over the rumble and bump of the wheels, as the child gives a confused elbowing shuffle inside him at this strange new movement. To the child, all of the world must be moving. The entire universe has just got up and started rolling.
He hums, and takes no joy in any of this, but he swears to the Virgin that he will do what he has to do for his children and if they can only live, Hell is a price worth paying, to him.
Continued